


lost boys, lost girls, we won't live forever

by Kody (saturated)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Developing Friendships, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, i love my children learning to love each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22634917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturated/pseuds/Kody
Summary: “What’s Eddie’s deal?” she asked point blank.“What do you mean?” Richie said.“Why does he hate me?” Bev asked.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Beverly Marsh
Comments: 7
Kudos: 62





	lost boys, lost girls, we won't live forever

**Author's Note:**

> Uh I'm a ho that loves the idea of Bev and Eddie being really close because of their shared trauma, but also like, there's no way Eddie immediately opened up to her without her having to earn his trust???
> 
> Anyway have some children learning to love

Bev liked her new friends a lot, or at least, most of them. Bill and Ben were really easy to talk to and get along with, and so were Stan and Mike once she broke through. Richie was strange at first, but once she sat down and really talked to him, she discovered they were practically the same person and suddenly she had a new best friend.

But then there was Eddie. Eddie was standoffish and hard to read. He had energy, that much Bev could see, and he was friendly to those he deemed worthy, mostly to Bill, Stan, and Richie, but also welcoming Ben and Mike to their group easily, but Bev was another story. He was nice enough to her, not being outright rude or mean, but there was a distance between them, a tension Bev didn’t understand.

She tried to break it. She tried to talk to him like she would anyone else. She was kind and open and complimented his fanny pack because you’re supposed to compliment people to get them to like you. Instead he pulled away, mumbled a thanks as though he thought she was making fun of him, and clung to Richie for the rest of the day like he tended to do.

Maybe that was it, Bev thought. Maybe he was jealous that Bev was taking his friends from him. But if that was the case, shouldn’t he act the same towards Ben and Mike?

Bev tried to shake it off. Not everyone needed to like her and that was fine. But she wanted Eddie to like her. She wanted them to be friends and she wanted that level of trust, especially when she heard him talk about his mother. It was the same way she talked about her dad.

Eddie would go off about something his mother did, like a doctor visit or a panic over a scraped knee or a rant about how his friends weren’t good enough for him, and everyone would nod and move along. Bev always wanted to jump in, to say that he didn’t deserve the way his mother treated him, but she couldn’t. She knew how it would go down. She would say something and he would be quick to defend his mother, thus lengthening the distance between them.

Bev figured she could wait it out. Eddie would come around eventually.

Once Ben had showed them the clubhouse, Bev took advantage of it, often leaving her home at night to avoid her dad, sleeping there instead of in her own bed. It was easier that way. And apparently, she wasn’t the only one that thought that.

It had been bad that night, her dad coming home in a drunken rage and yelling at her, things she couldn’t even hear anymore, things that she couldn’t process, so she left. She came to the clubhouse like she always did and there he was.

Eddie was tucked away in the hammock reading a comic book when Bev discovered him.

“Oh, sorry,” Bev said quickly. “I can go.”

“Don’t,” Eddie said. “I mean, I should probably go home anyway.” He started getting out of the hammock slowly, like he wasn’t in any hurry to leave.

“You can stay,” Bev said. “You were here first.”

“No, it’s fine,” Eddie mumbled. “I can just go to Richie’s or something.”

But he had just said he ought to go home. Now he was going to Richie’s.

“Stay,” Bev said. “The clubhouse is big enough for both of us.”

It was dark and Bev couldn’t read his face properly, but she was sure he was blushing. It was silent for a minute as Eddie thought about that, and Bev could feel every second of it.

“Okay,” Eddie said, and Bev exhaled. “But you can have the hammock, if you want it.”

“You were here first,” Bev repeated.

“Well, we can, um, share,” Eddie stuttered, “if you want. I don’t want you to have to sit on the ground.”

“Uh, sure,” Bev said. “Germs and shit, right?”

“R-right,” Eddie said.

They got into the hammock, much more gracefully than the other day when Eddie climbed on top of Richie and kicked him in the face. Their legs were overlapping, a closeness that felt both natural and uncomfortable at the same time, and Bev thought she ought to say something.

“I, um, my dad was being bad,” Bev said. “That’s why I’m here.”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah, my mom was on a fucking rampage again. She’s asleep now but I just didn’t want to be at home.”

“About what?” Bev ventured, noting how open Eddie had been.

“N-none of your business,” Eddie said, shutting down again. He quickly changed when he noticed Bev’s expression. “Sorry, I mean, it’s personal.”

“That’s okay,” Bev said. Maybe it was stupidly impulsive, but that kind of shit worked for Richie, so she asked, “Why don’t you like me, Eddie?”

“What?” Eddie said. “Do you…really think I don’t like you?”

“Seems like it.”

“I do…like you, I mean,” Eddie said. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Richie’s got like, a crush on you so maybe that’s why it’s weird.”

“Richie has a crush on me?” Bev asked. It would make sense. A lot of boys had crushes on her, and if Richie did, then she was stealing Eddie’s best friend.

Eddie’s eyes went wide. “Don’t tell him I said that,” he quickly said. “Unless you like him back.”

“I…don’t think so,” Bev said. She hadn’t really thought about it. If anything, he was like an annoying brother that wouldn’t go away. They smoked and made shitty jokes and sometimes she had to tell him to shut up because he went too far. What was it that Bill and Stan said when he said too much? Beep, beep? She had too many times that she thought about using it.

“Why not?” Eddie said getting defensive. “Who _do_ you like?”

“I don’t…” Bev said. “I don’t know. Does it matter? Do _you_ like Richie?”

“No! I’m not gay!” Eddie said getting angry.

“I didn’t say you were,” Bev said backpedaling. This was the farthest she had ever gotten with Eddie and she wasn’t about to lose it now.

“I’m not,” he said much more subdued.

“I…like Bill a lot,” Bev said trying to rebuild trust. “Ben too. They’re both super easy to talk to and really nice.”

Eddie nodded. “Bill is really nice. I don’t know Ben that well, but he seems cool too.” He paused. “You didn’t answer my other question.”

“Richie’s nice, but he’s too loud,” Bev said.

“He can be quiet when he wants to be,” Eddie said. “He never seems that loud to me.”

Things started clicking. Every comment that Richie made about Eddie was suddenly a puzzle piece that Bev didn’t know fit together. It struck Bev how much she knew about Eddie, that he hated math and loved the X-Men, that his dad died when he was five and that his mother was a clean freak who cared way too much about diseases, that he was kind and caring and cried one time when he was seven because he accidently stepped on a worm. And none of that came from Eddie’s mouth.

“He’s your best friend, right?” Bev asked.

Eddie nodded.

“Makes sense,” Bev said. “He never shuts up about you.”

Eddie didn’t say anything for a minute, and Bev wished it was lighter in here so she could read his face.

“I have to go,” Eddie said hopping up and running out.

She didn’t try to stop him.

Eddie didn’t even look at Bev for the next couple days. She tried to catch his eye, stand near him, anything to remind him of the progress they made that night in the clubhouse, but he wasn’t having any of it. She thought they had taken a step forward, and he thought they had taken three steps back.

She had found Richie sitting in the park and joined him on the bench. He was waiting for Eddie to come back with ice cream. Bev ignored how they always got ice cream for each other.

“What’s Eddie’s deal?” she asked point blank.

“What do you mean?” Richie said.

“Why does he hate me?” Bev asked.

“He doesn’t,” Richie said. “He thinks you’re super cool. I don’t know why he’s weird around you. Maybe he’s got a crush on you.”

_I’m not gay!_ Eddie had practically shouted these words at her, and Bev had a feeling she wasn’t the one these words were directed towards. These were likely words that Richie had never heard.

Bev rubbed her wrists like she tended to do when she was nervous, massaging the bruises as though that would make them disappear. Richie caught her hands.

“Did your dad do that?” Richie asked softly. He had never been so gentle with her before, and suddenly she knew what Eddie meant when he said that Richie was never too loud for him.

Bev nodded, not saying a word.

“You know,” Richie said. “You can come over whenever if you need to. My mom’s really nice and she would let you sleep over.”

Tears stung Bev’s eyes as Richie looked at her with so much pain. It hurt him to see the bruises. He didn’t want her to have them anymore. They had barely known each other for longer than this summer, but Bev knew that Richie would do anything for her, whether or not he had a crush on her like Eddie claimed. Richie was her friend, the best friend that she had ever had.

“I don’t like seeing you hurt, Bevvie,” Richie said.

No one had ever called her Bevvie, and she liked it a lot. It was sweet and personal and intimate, and she loved Richie. Tears fell and she couldn’t stop them.

It was then that Eddie came back with two ice cream cones. He handed one to Richie, avoiding eye contact with Bev like he usually did, but stopped in his tracks.

“Are you okay, Bev?” Eddie asked noticing her tears. It was the first time he had spoken to her since that night, and the tears kept coming.

Eddie sat the other side of her and handed her his ice cream. “Here,” he said. “You seem like you need this more than I do.”

She gingerly took it. “Thanks.”

And they were back to where they began.

School began again and life was just as hard as it was before. Bev didn’t know why she thought eighth grade would be different, that somehow everyone who was awful would either disappear or become better, but at least now she had friends to fall back on. She had friends to defend her and make her feel better, and she did the same for them.

Any time someone made fun of Bill’s stutter, she would come back about how their hair belonged in the ‘70s, or any time someone called Ben fat, she would remark on their stupidity and how they were failing math.

And they did the same for her, like that one time Greta Keene called her a whore and Richie said “Takes one to know one.” Or that one time someone wrote ‘slut’ on her locker and Stan wrote it on his own saying they could be sluts together.

Or how one day, a few weeks into the school year, she was stopped in the bathroom (why the bathroom? Her friend couldn’t help her there.) and three girls she didn’t recognize told her to make her boyfriend stand down or else they’d kick his ass. He was tiny enough anyway that they could do it.

She immediately thought of Bill, the boy she had been skirting around with for weeks because he had kissed her and neither of them knew what to do with that, but he wasn’t tiny.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Bev asked.

“Your sissy boyfriend Kaspbrak needs to step off,” one said, “or else he’ll get what’s coming to him.”

“He’s a sissy, huh?” Bev said. “Must not be as much of one as you think if you need to tell me to talk to him. If he was a sissy, couldn’t you do it? You can kick his ass after all.”

The girls didn’t have anything to say to that and left.

Bev went out to find Eddie, to thank him for standing up for her when she wasn’t looking, but what she found was some boy pushing him down as Eddie tried to ignore him.

“Stupid fucking queer,” the boy said. “Little faggot needs to stay home and play house with his mommy. Ain’t that right, Kaspbrak? You a fucking sissy momma’s boy?”

Eddie didn’t look at the boy, trying to stand up and walk away. Although, Bev could see that if Eddie didn’t walk away, he would have started wailing on the boy. Eddie’s expression read rage, and if he let himself have that, he would have punched and kicked and gotten his ass handed to him because of the size of the other boy. It would have had him in the nurse’s office with his mother picking up and taking him directly to a doctor and likely out of school for a few days. Eddie couldn’t let himself defend himself.

But Bev could defend him.

“Hey, Eddie,” she ran up to him, ignoring the boy and wrapping her arm around Eddie’s shoulder. “You get the homework done? I was thinking we could do it after school if you want.”

“Uh,” Eddie said. “Yeah, sure.”

“Fuck off, Marsh,” the boy said. “Me and Kaspbrak were having a conversation.”

“Well, anything you can say to my _boyfriend_ ,” Bev said, “you can say to me.”

Eddie went red. Bev hoped she didn’t overstep any boundaries.

“You dating all of those losers, Marsh?” the boy asked. “Or do they each get a turn with you?”

“Aww, do you wish you had a turn?” Bev taunted. “Unfortunately for you, Eddie is the only boy for me.”

The boy didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t come up with anything to say, and he couldn’t punch her. It was a standoff, and Bev had the upper hand. She had won, and he was trying to figure out how he could get the last word.

“Yeah, well,” he said, “have fun fucking a fairy.” He turned and left, stomping off to likely go bitch about that stupid tramp Marsh to his friends somewhere.

“Sorry,” Bev said immediately. “He was calling you names and I thought that if he thought we were dating he –”

“Thanks,” Eddie said. “I was about to knock his lights out and my mom would have had an aneurysm if I did…so thanks.”

“No problem,” Bev said.

Eddie looked around nervously. “Hey, um, are you and Bill dating?”

“I don’t think so,” Bev admitted. “Why?”

“Can, um, um,” Eddie stuttered. “If anyone else does that, you can do what you did. Then people won’t think…that I’m…”

“Yeah,” Bev said. “Of course, I can.”

“You’re a really good friend, Bev,” Eddie said.

Eddie reached out, and carefully took Bev’s hand, pulling her along to class, and Bev knew this wasn’t for show. Even if Eddie didn’t need to give people a reason to think he was into girls, he would have taken her hand anyway. It was another thing that reminded Bev of herself, and she vaguely wondered how often his mother hugged him.

That night, she was in the clubhouse first. She had been dozing off, listening to the Tears for Fears album Richie had loaned her on the Walkman he also loaned her, when Eddie came in. He was breathing heavily, hyperventilating.

An asthma attack, Bev thought, but no, he didn’t have asthma. He learned that this summer. He was panicking, and Bev knew that one well.

“Eddie?” Bev said putting the Walkman away.

He got in the hammock with her and started talking a mile a minute. “My mom fucking sucks. I hate her so much. I don’t know why she can’t just let me live my fucking life without criticizing every fucking thing I do. Like, she hates you and everyone else and I don’t know what to do. I don’t…I can’t…I just want her to listen.”

“Hey,” Bev said leaning forward and putting her hands on Eddie’s knees. “You’re fine. Slow down and breathe.”

Eddie took a deep breath. And another. “She hates all of my friends. She says you’re a tramp and that Mike is…you know. And that Stan’s a greedy Jew and Richie is…Richie is…” He put his hands in his hair. “Richie’s a dirty queer and he’s gonna infect me.”

“God, she sucks,” Bev said. “I wish you and me could run away from here. Away from our shitty parents.”

“Your dad…” Eddie said. He wiped tears from his eyes. “I shouldn’t complain. Your dad’s so much worse.”

“How do you figure?”

“My mom doesn’t hit me,” Eddie said as if that was explanation enough. “But your dad…”

“Even if your mom doesn’t hit you,” Bev explained, “she makes you feel like shit on purpose. She doesn’t like any of us because she doesn’t want you to have any friends.” She paused. “Why do you come here, Eddie?”

“I’m scared,” Eddie admitted. “I’m scared she’s gonna…find out.”

“If you’re scared of her,” Bev said, “it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t hit you. You shouldn’t be scared of her.” She recalled the night last week that she went to Richie’s instead of the clubhouse. She was terrified of her father and she needed someone to take care of her. Maggie Tozier obliged and treated her like her own daughter. Bev had never felt so loved and so heartbroken at the same time, especially when Maggie saw the bruises. It was then she learned that shit like that wasn’t supposed to happen, she wasn’t supposed to be scared of her dad.

“I am,” Eddie said. “She’s gonna hate me, I know she will.”

He had stumbled over _dirty queer_. He didn’t want to say it. He almost couldn’t.

“What’s she gonna find out, Eddie?” Bev asked carefully.

“I’m not gay,” Eddie said quietly. “I’m not gay. I’m not.”

“No one said you were.”

“I’m not a dirty queer,” Eddie said. “Richie didn’t infect me. I’m not dirty. I’m not. I can’t be.”

“It’s okay, Eddie,” Bev said. “I love you, Eddie.”

That stopped Eddie in his tracks. He put his head down and started crying. “I’m not gay.”

Bev moved forward. It was difficult as the hammock swung back and forth, but she managed to get over to Eddie and sit on her knees in front of him before pulling him into a hug as he sobbed into her shoulder.

“You can’t tell anyone, Bevvie,” Eddie said. “Richie didn’t infect me. He didn’t. I would have…I would have even if he wasn’t.”

“You would have what, Eddie?”

“Loved him.”

Bev held Eddie tighter.

“I love you too, Bevvie,” Eddie said. “I…I am, aren’t I?”

Bev pulled back to look Eddie in the eye.

“I’m gay, Bevvie,” Eddie said. “I’m gay and I love Richie…” More tears poured out. “And my mom’s gonna hate me just like she hates Richie.”

Bev hugged Eddie again, before he decided they ought to sleep. But he didn’t want to sleep alone. He always liked it when Richie came by and spent the night. They didn’t tell anyone, and Eddie didn’t know why he was telling Bev, but they always slept in the same bed. They liked it that way.

So, Bev took the hint and lied down with Eddie so that her head rested on his chest, and it was the best night sleep she had ever had as she listened to the slow soothing sound of his heartbeat.

**Author's Note:**

> :000
> 
> If you want to hmu and talk about It or my fic or to tell me about your day, my tumblr is the-u-s-s-enterprise
> 
> *throws up uncomfy peace sign because that is my comfort motion*
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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